_Colonel Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, Commanding_.
Colonel Chivington, from Fort Rankin, reported:
Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, with 200 men of the Eleventh Ohio, and
Company D, Seventh Iowa Cavalry, fought Indians from the 4th to the
9th inst., at Mud Springs. The Indians at one time charged our forces
in the face of artillery and were nearly successful. Two thousand
warriors were engaged in the fight. It is supposed forty Indians were
killed. Beaure's and Craighten's herds were driven off. The Indians
crossed at Bush Creek, going north. The telegraph poles were gone and
wires so inextricably tangled as to be useless. Seven hundred lodges
crossed Pole Creek, six miles below Pole Creek crossing.
These Indians were not driven off and the telegraph-lines retaken without
severe fighting and loss of many soldiers. Within two weeks the troops
drove these Indians north, where a detachment of troops from Fort Laramie
attacked them and drove them across the Platte. Finally the Indians saw
that a different warfare was being made against them, and they fled to
their villages on the Powder River and in the Black Hills country.
There was such energy and such spirit displayed by the troops, that after
two weeks' work they had the telegraph-lines replaced between Omaha and
Denver, a distance of 600 miles, and this without any additional force to
aid them. The progress made in putting up the wires is shown by this
report:
My troop is at Moore's ranch; passed there at 2 o'clock. We ran twelve
miles of wire and set eight miles of poles, had two severe fights, and
marched fifty-five miles in fifty-two hours. Operators furnished
valuable service.